Effective teaching and effective learning

Every teacher knows that an “effective teaching” leads to “effective learning” and an effective learning means students will have the knowledge and the skills to achieve their education goals. For many years, schools often measured “effective learning” based on students' performance on exams. The traditional exam is mostly based on the ability to recall facts and data where students memorize certain contents. The problem is this type of learning only produces graduates who have good memory and can repeat phrases in books may not be able to apply the knowledge to solve problems.

Today students are active, they do not stay quiet throughout the class time. If you teach by the lecturing method, after about 10 to 15 minutes many students' attention will switch to something else. They may sit quiet but their minds are somewhere else and do not learn much. Classroom research found that after a lecture most students can recall 60% of what teacher said in the first ten minutes but only 20% of what teacher said after that. It concluded that “Lecturing method is no longer suitable for classroom today.”

There are seven teaching effectiveness levels that teachers could follow to improve their teaching effectiveness and increase students learning that leads to the development of problem solving skills:

1) Knowledge level: Students should be able to repeating what they learn (The traditional technique or memorization style) For example: Describe the five phases of the software development life cycle.

2) Comprehension level: Students should be able to demonstrating their understanding of concepts by explaining “in their own words” of the concept. For example: Explain in detail the five phases of the software development lifecycle.

3) Application level: Students should be able to solve problems to demonstrate that they can apply the concept well. For example: What would you do if customers are changing requirements during the design phase? What if they add more requirements during the coding phase? Can you skip a phase in the lifecycle?

4) Analysis level: Students should be able to break things down into smaller elements, formulating theoretical explanations for certain situation. For example, given a requirements specification, students should be able to break them down into smaller elements using Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) technique to smaller tasks then estimate the time and efforts to complete them. From these estimates, they learn how to construct a project schedule and resource needed for the project.

5) Synthesis level: Students should be able to creating something by combining many elements in a logical ways: For example, using the requirements specification and the Work Breakdown Structure, students can design a software system with features, functions and dataflow diagram within system constraints;

6) Evaluation level: Students should be able to choose among alternatives to come up with a well construct solution. For example, Students should be able to determine among several design options of the software system and select which design is the best and be able to explain their reasoning.

7) Problem solving level: Student should be able to solve complex problem by broken down it into a series of steps, such as paraphrasing the problem statement, sketching a schematic or flow chart, predicting a solution, writing the relevant equations, solving them or outlining a solution procedure, and interpreting the solution. For example give a software requirements, students should be able to analyze them, breakdown into several functionalities, each function may be broken down into several tasks, each task is connected to others by a dataflow diagram and organize into a cohesive system diagram on how the entire system will work.

To apply this effectiveness concept to ensure students will learn, I often give them something to do such as class discussion, class exercise and teamwork.

To start at the knowledge level, I often spend about 10 to 15 minutes giving lectures, emphasize the key concept then ask students to recall the lecture material to see if they are learning anything. By given each student one or two minute to list as many key points as they can recall about the lecture, I can evaluate how much students are paying attention to the lecture. Sometime students may not be willing to give answers, even they know the answers but when the questions are directed to a team in a competitive environment, (i.e., Team A is better than Team B as they have more members to give answer) most students will try to come up with answers and I get many responses.

To achieve the comprehension level, after the short lectures, I ask students to form into groups of two or three and begin a discussion about the materials. After 1 to 2 minutes, I then poses questions and require each team to answer in their own word to make sure that they understand the concept that I taught. For example: What are the activities in requirements phase? Can you describe the design phase? Can you elaborate on the testing phase?

To achieve the application level, I raise a problem for teams to come up with a solution. After few minutes (2 to 5 minutes), I randomly select one or more team to present their solutions. Selecting teams randomly instead of asking for volunteers is important. If the students know that other team will give the answer, many will not even bother to think about the question. For example: Do you think we can skip the design phase and go to coding phase? Why and why not? What happen when requirements are changing in coding phase? What can you do?

To achieve the analysis level, I will give one member of the team a problem. That team member must be able to explain the problem in more details to the team when other members could ask for clarification if anything is unclear. After about five minutes, I will ask the team to summarize their understanding of the problem and how well they have been able to analyze it in detail.

To achieve the synthesis level, I give the class a case or situation to analyze. Each team will be asked to list their assumptions, problems, errors, or technical dilemmas in the case then explain it to the class. The class will discuss to find the logical flaw in the argument and come up with a conclusion to that case situation. Sometime I may work through a situation in class, complete some steps then ask a student or a team to continue my work.

To achieve the evaluation level, I would give the class a case study, or a problem that have been solved and ask the class to review and comment on the solution or find other alternative solutions.

To achieve the problem solving, I would give the class a complex problem to solve. Since it takes time to solve the problem, I often give it as homework where the team has few days to solve the problem and come to class to present the solution.

The more practice and feedback the students get in the types of active learning, the better they learn and the more likely they are to acquire the knowledge and develop the needed skills. By following these effective teaching principles, I can prepare better lecturing materials, better assignment and facilitate in-class activities, homework assignments, and tests.

Sources

  • Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University

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